I have fun memories of free hot tub that, as household of young men, we ripped out of a house, wired in to our rental and featured briefly in our parties (before the landlord decided to redevelop and kick us all out). I am not as interested in full price retail hot tubs. The only good part of a new hot tub is that they install it.
Well friends of ours were doing a reno and they had a little 2 person Spaberry hot tub that had a leak somewhere and they were going to upgrade. We just had to get it, fix it and install it at our house.
The getting it was OK as we could roll a trailer into the yard and slid it in (not as easy as it sounds but OK). I then took it out to the shop for testing with my son helping (forklifts are great to lift a small tub in the air to look for leaks). It leaked but luckily not from any of the pipes or valves, just the motor/wet end. So weeks later I secured a used pump and assembly and eventually installed it. All the usual fun work of rusting bolts, slightly different spacing and a tight working environment. I was running out of curse words but I got it done.
Now the fun part, moving back and into our back yard. It needed to go on its side but a unlike 90% of tubs this one had no frame - its a 1 piece tub. So chopped a pallet down, used the forklift and myself to flip it on its side. I then made the pallet into a sled by screwing some arena board on to the bottom. I know some of the professional hot tub moving people use arena board for this too. Its cheap, slick and worked great. Arena board is one of our best utility plastics for inexpensive slippery surfaces (like snowmobile decks, hockey shooting mats, boat trailer slides etc.) Oh and getting off the truck? - I'm lucky as I have a driveway that sinks down a bit so I was able to reduce the drop to only a foot or so - ie slide it out at an angle and then lower it the final foot on one side.
The only bad part was we did stress the gel coat on the outside of the tub and ended up with a host of stress cracks.
These are really only in the finish and not the fiberglass structure and they are all on the outside of the tub so I am not expecting any issues.
By the end of it my back could use a nice hot tub - too bad it takes hours to heat up.
Well friends of ours were doing a reno and they had a little 2 person Spaberry hot tub that had a leak somewhere and they were going to upgrade. We just had to get it, fix it and install it at our house.
The getting it was OK as we could roll a trailer into the yard and slid it in (not as easy as it sounds but OK). I then took it out to the shop for testing with my son helping (forklifts are great to lift a small tub in the air to look for leaks). It leaked but luckily not from any of the pipes or valves, just the motor/wet end. So weeks later I secured a used pump and assembly and eventually installed it. All the usual fun work of rusting bolts, slightly different spacing and a tight working environment. I was running out of curse words but I got it done.
Now the fun part, moving back and into our back yard. It needed to go on its side but a unlike 90% of tubs this one had no frame - its a 1 piece tub. So chopped a pallet down, used the forklift and myself to flip it on its side. I then made the pallet into a sled by screwing some arena board on to the bottom. I know some of the professional hot tub moving people use arena board for this too. Its cheap, slick and worked great. Arena board is one of our best utility plastics for inexpensive slippery surfaces (like snowmobile decks, hockey shooting mats, boat trailer slides etc.) Oh and getting off the truck? - I'm lucky as I have a driveway that sinks down a bit so I was able to reduce the drop to only a foot or so - ie slide it out at an angle and then lower it the final foot on one side.
The only bad part was we did stress the gel coat on the outside of the tub and ended up with a host of stress cracks.
These are really only in the finish and not the fiberglass structure and they are all on the outside of the tub so I am not expecting any issues.
By the end of it my back could use a nice hot tub - too bad it takes hours to heat up.
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